In the ever changing world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), we wanted to share some SEO trends and tips to consider if you are thinking about your website and Google rankings in 2019.

1. Content continues to be king!

Since we launched One To Three Marketing Solutions in 2010, we’ve been telling our clients about the importance of good quality content. If you share information that your clients want to know about they will come to you for advice and guidance. They are also more likely to link to your website from their own websites and social media platforms.

Create content that your readers want to see and stay consistent. Google likes fresh content so consider blogging about your industry and sharing hints and tips (much like this blog post). We think that video content will become even bigger in 2019. Currently 55% of people watch videos online every day. Did you know that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text? So make sure video marketing is part of your marketing mix in 2019.

When blogging and writing descriptions for your videos, remember to think about the keywords you want to be found for. Include these keywords in the copy of your website and remember to update the code behind your site too. Ensure you update the meta title and meta description PER blog post. There is often debate about the optimum length of meta data, as Google’s search displays keep changing. I recommend that the meta title should be between 60-75 characters and the meta description should be no longer than 156 characters (including spaces and punctuation). Having the keywords in the title and the first paragraph will also help your case with SEO. We always recommend creating websites in WordPress using the Yoast SEO plugin which offers a traffic light system to help you improve your SEO and takes you through a step-by-step guide per page of your website.

If you generate good, interesting, relevant content, people will link back to your site and backlinks will continue to play a role in SEO trends in 2019. The best advice here is to grow your links organically.

2. Branding

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again; if content is king then engagement is queen! Encourage debate, ask questions and allow your audience to engage with your posts.

It’s important to ensure your brand is recognised by Google which can be achieved through consistent content. Branding is a way of promoting your website and its content (including blogs) on various platforms such as social media to gain more audience attraction. Once the audience starts to know more about your brand, if they are able to relate to your website they will share it with their contacts.

Once your online brand starts to build, Google will begin to notice your presence and will give results for the queries related to your niche. If any content on your website is popular across social media then it is possible that Google will index that page much faster in comparison to other pages. Online branding is one to watch out for in 2019 in SEO trends and Google rankings!

3. Optimising for voice search

“50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020” according to com score.

As it becomes the norm for our children to ask Siri and Alexa all varieties of questions, voice search will continue to grow in 2019. So think about providing answers to specific questions, with your business audience in mind.

Create a piece of content that directly answers a question e.g. “How do I share a post from one Facebook business page to another business page?” Make sure to include the question itself, and a direct answer to it. This is all about content again and providing answers to questions that may attract a new audience.

4. Featured Snippets / Quick Answers

A featured snippet — also known as a “rich answer” or “direct answer” or “quick answer” — is a summary answer to a searcher’s question that Google shows in a special block at the top of the page. It usually comes with a link back to your site, which has great traffic-attracting potential.

To try and rank for this rich snippet box, you need to identify queries and the intent behind your user’s search queries when performing your keyword research. You can do this through ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ search terms. You should then aim to directly answer these within your content, simply and easily. A great way to do this is through a Q&A page on your website. You can provide the user with a quick answer, rather than scrolling through lengthy articles. An example of this can be seen here, with an article we shared on LinkedIn on, “How to set up an autoreply on Facebook messenger”.

5. Longtail keywords

With the increase in voice searches, there will be more of a need to focus on on more long-tail search keywords and a natural language that matches the user’s conversational tone. Longtail keywords are basically a phrase rather than a single keyword. If I’m searching for “shoes” I’m just browsing. If I’m searching for “Where can I buy black patent shoes with a kitten heel, size 5?” this is a longtail keyword phrase and I’m ready to make a purchase.

I always tell our clients it is better to attract fewer visitors to your website who are likely to convert into customers, than thousands of visitors who only spend a few seconds on the site.

Think about more specific keyword searches, related to you and your business to attract the right kind of visitors to your site. If you only want to work in a certain area or are offering events or training courses in a certain place, then geographic keywords are a must.

6. Site Speed

Speed will continue to be an important factor in 2019. Accelerated Mobile Pages project (AMP) was a Google initiative to build a better, more user friendly mobile web by introducing a new “standard” for building web content for mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages load instantly and improve the end user experience. Ever since its launch in search results in February 2016, AMP has been in the SEO news. In simple terms, pages that load quickly are going to be a must-have in the future. You can check your site speed in Google Analytics.

7. Mobile Friendly

Mobile friendly sites have been big news for a while now (see my blog post from 2015) and of course this will continue to be the case for 2019. As more and more users access websites from their smart phones or tablets, the importance of mobile friendly websites has never been more important. Can users click on your telephone number to call you? Is your site interactive? Think mobile friendly and speed for your websites in 2019. We also recommend that all sites should be secure (using https rather than http) as Google likes and trusts secure sites.

The end user experience continues to be of upmost importance. Encourage your users to stay on your site for longer and reduce your bounce rate. The trick is once you capture an audience, to keep them on the site, so if you are attracting your audience through your blog, ensure you have links to other relevant pages to your website from your blog. Is your site interactive and responsive? Improved User Interface and user needs are going to continue their importance throughout 2019.

Remember to use Google Analytics to track your bounce rate and the time spent on your site. You can also use Google Analytics to work out which pages of your site are turning your clients off and where they are leaving your site. You should continually monitor the end user experience of visitors on your website.

9. Make the most of Google’s free tools

Talking of Google Analytics, we tell all of our client to ensure they are making the most of all of the free Google tools on offer.

Every local business should have a Google My Business listing, which leads me nicely onto:

10. Relevance of local search

Everybody who has worked with me will know the importance I place on local search, and as more and more websites are flooding the Internet and with the increase in mobile sites, I think this will be an area of growing importance in 2019. Think about the areas where your clients are based and where you want to work and include these geographic areas in your keywords and throughout your website.

Also remember the importance of an up-to-date Google My Business listing. Reviews are really important and encourage your clients to leave reviews on your Google My Business listing and be sure to reply to these reviews. You can now add posts to Google My Business listings and as Google collects more and more data on each listing, I believe this is an area to watch in 2019. You can read my blog here. You can feature on the first page of local searches on Google with a Google My Business listing, without working on your website at all. Google My Business is adding new functionality all of the time and you can now add short videos to your listing too. Ensure you include your keywords in your business description too.

If you have any questions or have anything to add to this post, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you believe there is there anything else that will rock the SEO world in 2019? Are there any other SEO trends or tips you’d like to share?

Google My Business is constantly changing and evolving and we’d like to update you with the latest changes. If you’ve had multiple listings in the past, you can now manage these under one account as you can now select different areas where your business works. This can be found under the info tab on the left hand side and then select “add service area”. You can now add multiple areas by postcode or city. The old “service area” where you could enter a radius is no longer available. If you’ve already updated the service area field in the past and entered that you work with clients within a certain mile radius, you can keep this, but you can no longer edit it.

This is great for businesses that have one central address but work in lots of different areas such as a yoga teacher. However, if you have multiple locations such as several beauty salons, we would still recommend keeping these separate listings, as you can add events to each listing and your customers can leave reviews for the relevant listing. Yes, it means you are still updating multiple listings, but you can post information relevant to each separate location. Of course, the choice is entirely up to you, so if you’d prefer to have one listing and list your various locations, that is now an option in Google My Business.

You can also add a start date to your business listing. This is great for new companies that are about to launch, as you can add a start date to let people know when the business will be open. While you are in the info tab, please ensure you’ve updated your business description and remember to include your keywords here.

However you decide to use these changes in Google My Business, the most important thing is that you have a listing and that you update it, encourage client reviews and ensure that the listing is completed as much as possible. Remember to take a look at your Insights too as you can now see which keywords people are using to find your business. We love to analyse this data! We’ve always encouraged all of our clients to have a Google My Business listing as it’s free and it’s BRILLIANT for appearing in local searches. If you have any questions, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We’ve been advising our clients for years to create a free Google My Business listing (previously known as Google Maps and Google Places). Why? Because you can appear on the first page of Google for local searches, without doing any work to your website whatsoever! It is also a fantastic free tool that helps you to raise your profile online. Now you can add even more information to your listing by adding posts <read our blog about Google My Business posts>. In this blog we’d like to share the importance of collecting reviews against your Google My Business listing and how to do this easily.

It takes just a few minutes to create a listing. Go to https://www.google.co.uk/business/go/ and follow the step-by-step instructions. Please ensure that your listing is 100% complete and that you include some photos. Reviews are also really important as they will help to raise your profile and they will also tell other potential clients what to expect from your services.

It’s even easier to ask your clients for a review, simply send them a shortened link, straight through to your listing. Here’s how:

To create a link, you’ll need to get the Place ID for your business. To get your Place ID:

Now just shorten this URL, so you can easily send this out to clients. Hootsuite has a URL shortening tool built in which is very handy. You can also use the websites tinyurl.com and bit.ly for free. The above link, now becomes: http://ow.ly/KcL930fQYtv. Once you have reviews, ensure you respond to each review (whether it’s good or bad). If you want to remove a review, the best thing to do is ask the person who wrote the review to remove it. You can now click on this link and write a review for One to Three Marketing Solutions!

As Google collects more and more information on Google My Business listings, we really think this is one to watch for 2018. So don’t miss out! Ensure you have a listing, make it as complete as possible and start asking for reviews. Please note that you need to have a Google account in order to add reviews.

I recently presented at a networking event and I shared a number of Google’s free tools that some people just aren’t aware of. Most people recognise that Google has the largest share of the search engine market (even my children use the term “just Google it”), but many people don’t have a Google account, let alone use some of the great tools Google has to offer.

Google has had a huge impact on the digital marketing world and it’s something that touches just about every channel us marketers use on a daily basis. In order to make the most of the tools below, you’ll need to get a free Google account – www.google.co.uk. You can sign up on the top right hand side of the screen and it only takes a few seconds.

Here are some of my favourite free tools from Google:

Google Analytics – google.co.uk/analyticsThis is my favourite tool! I tell all business owners to sign up to Google Analytics. It’s quick and easy to install on any website. It will then give you all of the information you’ll ever need to know about your website traffic – how your visitors are reaching your site, where they are coming from and more importantly the quality of this data. There’s no point in having a lovely website if you have no idea if your potential customers are accessing it. Google Analytics can measure pretty much all of your digital marketing activity from email campaigns to social media.

Google Alerts – google.co.uk/alerts
You can type in any word relevant to your business and Google will give you a list of the latest press articles and blogs on that subject – perfect for sharing on your social media channels. I use this tool every week. You can even create alerts to send straight to your inbox on a daily or weekly basis.

Webmaster Tools – google.co.uk/webmastertoolsThis is where you can check the overall health of your site, find out which keywords people are using to find your site and even check the mobile compatability of your website.

Google Places – google.co.uk/placesHere you can add the physical location of your business, including your website and telephone number. Google Places listings often appear on the first page of Google, right under the Ads on geographic searches.

Google Keyword Tool – adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner Want to know what people are actually searching for in Google each month and which keywords you should be using? This tool can you help you plan your keywords for each page of your website and even lets you know how competitive each search is.

Google+ – plus.google.comGoogle’s social media platform with over 300 million monthly active users. Adding content here will help your content get noticed and indexed by Google’s searches.

Blogger – google.co.uk/bloggerGoogle’s free blogging tool which is easy and intuitive to use, again giving you the opportunity to submit fresh and new content to Google.

If you have any questions on any of these free tools or would like to find out more, just get in touch.

There are approximately 150,000 new domain names registered every day!

When I Googled the question how many websites are there on the www….the number was so huge it took me a while to work it out…..let’s just say its billions and billions!

The most Googled search term is…..Facebook!

Google is the 5th most googled search term……

I think we can all conclude that the internet is HUGE and it should form a huge part of your marketing plan – and of course it’s not just yourwebsite that is important but your presence on social media sites, networking websites….have you ever Googled yourself to see what comes up……it’s a good idea to do it because that is what potential customers will find if they Google your name……

I could write all day about the importance of a general online presence but this blog is going to focus on website copy and will give you our top 5 tips of what content we believe is must have.

1 Now this sounds obvious but you’d be surprised….contact details. Telephone numbers, address, email and also Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn details. People are more and more wanting to find out a bit about you online before they pick up the phone or drop you an email.

2 What do you do? So many websites don’t tell you this vital information. Write this ‘about you’ section as if you are introducing yourself to someone at a networking event for the very first time. Don’t try to be ‘clever’ or too creative here – get to the point!

3 YOU! It is so important to have a personal presence on your website – a bit about you. It doesn’t have to be a chapter and verse life story but an insight into you as a human being is key – I also like to see pictures of the people involved in the business to add a personal element

REAL case studies……show off a bit! Tell the world about your business successes and ask clients for testimonials that can be published online– case studies demonstrate you in action and can be very powerful

Simplicity – don’t use 10 words when 1 will do! Don’t use jargon, don’t use fluff to fill a page – a good image will say far more than ‘gumf’!

Once you have the basics in place it is then important to think about how people are gong to find your website and how you are going to keep it up to date……but that’s a whole other blog which we’ll share with you soon!